


Hold Onto Your Heart

by EmiAliceinWonderland



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Minor Violence, Romance, Swearing, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:06:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7836895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiAliceinWonderland/pseuds/EmiAliceinWonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson might have been very different people if they hadn't been as brave. <br/>~AU in which Blaine transfers to McKinley instead of Dalton after he is beaten up. He puts on a badboy act, and meets Kurt. Who is doing the same.~</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Onto Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> *Sits on rocking chair, looks out into the distance, adjusts glasses* Back in my day, kids, the Badboy Blaine and Skank Kurt trope was so popular that there were more fics about it than canon Klaine. 
> 
> ___
> 
> Hi, I think I wrote this when I was about 14/15 again? I'm just uploading a few things that aren't too awful since I've got an account now. It was gonna be a full multichaptered alternate universe story as all famous klaine fics were back in the day, but for now, it's just this.

  
  
Falling in love has never been a part of Blaine Anderson’s plans.

He realises this around the same time he realises he’s gay. His dad slaps him twice around the face when he comes out, and every time Blaine’s said the words ‘ _I’m gay’_ since, he swears he can smell the alcohol, bitter and heady, from his dad’s breath, and feel the phantom sting of a palm against his cheek.

He goes to his school’s Sadie Hawkins dance with another boy five months later, more as a ‘fuck you’ to the school and his parents and his so-called friends than anything.

In short: he ends up regretting it.

It’s in his hospital bed, knee shoved back into place, arm in a sling, head bandaged, that he sets out some rules for himself.

Being known as gay, and being seen close to another queer boy is dangerous. Being gay is _dangerous_.

Blaine knows this. He knows this, so he’s going to shove that part of him away, and become the dangerous thing himself.

His head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton, half from painkillers, and half from the epiphany that he can have control. He can’t erase the hell that’s been the past few months, but he can find a mask and wear it well – one that’ll keep him safe.

He takes his little notebook (a get well gift from his brother, Cooper, to doodle in whilst he’s bored and bed-bound) from the nightstand in his hospital room, and writes, hand shaking, a list of things he can’t do any more if he wants to please his parents and not get killed by his peers.

It reads:

DO NOT

  * _Tell anyone I’m gay_
  * _Hang around with other gay boys_
  * _Trust anyone_
  * _Make ‘friends’_
  * _Fall in love with a boy_
  * _Wear gay clothes, talk about musicals etc._



~*~

 

“Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off,” Blaine’s muttering under his breath.

(What he’s really saying, in his head, is “ _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry_.”)

He hates this new school, hates it and it’s busy, too-loud hallways, and distinct lack of a safe uniform, and God, isn’t that ironic, because half the reason he’d been kicked out of Dalton was for ‘ _Repeated refusal to comply with school rules, namely the dress code’._

He sucks in a deep breath, finds his new locker, and leans against it for a second, fixing his facial expression into what he hopes is a hard glare, one that says, “ _I hate you all already. Stay the hell away from me.”_

He can’t help wrapping his arms around himself protectively when he looks out into the sea of students, though, some chatting by the lockers, others hurrying down the hallway; he’s already seen a weedy Freshman guy get shoved over outside by a group of jocks, and sure, he’s not exactly a target himself any more, his outside armour, his mask, deters people, but it still sends a spike of nerves through him, anxiety and memories and sadness and pity.

He wishes he could be as emotionless as he pretends to be, sometimes.

~*~

 

Kurt’s on his way to his locker, he needs to grab his lighter so he and Quinn can have their morning smoking session in favour of sitting through homeroom. Normally, it’s a quick in and out of the school building for Kurt, he doesn’t like being in the hallways, too many memories seep into his head, memories he doesn’t want, memories of locker slams, and slushies, and a load of stupid shit that he tries to pretend never happened.

What sort of school would even _let_ things like that happen in the first place?

Kurt grits his teeth together, already getting annoyed, as he always does, when he dwells too hard on the utter lack of _nothing_ in terms of help he was given in previous years. He has himself now, though. Has his clothes, and his cigarettes, and his hopes that maybe one day he’ll actually manage to get out of this place.

He’s not sure where he wants to go yet, the dream was New York once. ‘The dream’ doesn’t really exist at all anymore, now. So Kurt figures he’ll adapt to wherever life takes him. As long as he’s out of here he’ll be okay.

He just wants to get _out._

He scans his eyes across to the block where his locker is, clacking his tongue ring up against the roof of his mouth when he sees a boy leaning against it. He hasn’t seen him before. But, that doesn’t mean he’s new; after all Kurt’s hardly in school enough to notice who comes and goes.

He can’t help but think he’d have noticed this particular boy before, though – leather jacket clad, arms crossed, jaw clenched, shoulders in a tense set that Kurt can feel in his own posture, can see even across the hallway.

It’s the kind of stance you adopt when you’ve been hurt. Hurt and hiding it. Kurt knows that.

Once he’s close enough that he can smell smoke on the other boy, (and _that_ makes him feel a little like smiling. For all his wanting to be unique, different, special, Kurt’s often longed, above all else, to fit in, to find someone like him. So, on principle, he thinks he might be able to like this boy. Scared and a smoker. Kurt’s got him down already) he crosses his own arms over his chest, lifts his black booted foot lift slightly, then snaps it back to the ground in a series of little, ‘ _I’m impatient, I’m here, look at me’_ taps.

The boy does, of course, look up at that, and Kurt almost lets out a laugh at how _terrified_  he looks, and oh, he needs some lessons in disguising that fear, because fear doesn’t go with an image like that, and an image like that is a shield to keep you safe. Kurt knows that.

“Move,” Kurt says, raising his eyebrows towards his locker behind the boy. His voice isn’t unkind, in fact it’s a few shades softer than usual, no snappish bite to it, only a bored, basic rudeness that comes with being generally apathetic to the world.

The boy startles at the simple command, and God, really, _what_ is he playing at dressing like this, but acting like a petrified freshman?

He lets out a little noise, slightly strangled, and moves quickly out of the way, his hands briefly coming out, away from his body, like he’s ready to defend himself if Kurt throws a punch.

Kurt doesn’t. He raises an eyebrow, purses his lips for a second, and looks the boy up and down; he’s small, a good few inches shorter than Kurt, compact, with a tiny waist, but not frail. His hair and eyes are dark. His clothes are dark.

Everything about him is just _dark_ , and not even in a mysterious, enchanting way. Just a ‘ _well, shit, what’s his deal?_ ’ kind of way.

“Calm down, James Dean, I don’t kill pretty boys like you,” says Kurt after a moment or two, before turning to enter the code to his locker, tugging it open, and rummaging through the various papers and clothes, and knick knacks in there, for his lighter.

“There you are,” he mutters, twirling it around his fingers for a second, shutting his locker, and then shoving it into his jacket pocket. “See you around, pretty boy,” he adds, taking another long look at the guy, who’s staring right back at him, mouth set in a tight line, forehead furrowed into a tiny frown.

It feels, looking at him, almost like taking one last, drawn out drag from a cigarette. It feels good, feels like he needs to do it; but, underneath it all: dangerous.

 

~*~

Blaine gets through the first school week at McKinley like a robot; one day after the other, one foot in front of the other. Left, right, in, out, he keeps on breathing, and he’s _manages_ , but he hates it.

He doesn’t make any friends, because he doesn’t want to. Friends mean letting people in, talking about yourself, and he doesn’t want to do any of that, _can’t_ do any of that if he wants to stay safe. He starts counting how many days he can go without speaking to anyone apart from the teachers that occasionally call on him in class, starts counting how many meals he can skip without anyone noticing, and how long he can go without anyone touching him.

It’s not hard with no friends, and parents that don’t hug you.

He only breaks his continued silence on the Friday; there’s a group of girls in his History class that won’t stop staring at him, and giggling and whispering, and god, he’s right _here_ and he can hear them, feel their stupid, too heavy gazes on him.

“Would you fucking stop looking at me,” he spits out, arms wrapped around himself, head down, teeth gritted, anxiety coiling tight around his ribcage, and snaking up into his chest.

The girls gasp, of course, offended little noses, and then the teacher is by Blaine’s desk, red-faced, a little shocked, a little angry. “Mr Anderson, your attitude and language isn’t acceptable at McKinley—“

“Save it,” Blaine stands up, his chair scraping back away from the desk. He grabs his bag, hitches it onto his shoulder, and walks straight out of the classroom.

 

~*~

 

“Watch it—“ Kurt mutters, as a fast-moving, dark shape nearly barrels right into him, walking down the other side of the empty hallway.

 It takes him a second to realise that it’s none other than Pretty Boy. He’s seen him around, caught snatches of him here and there throughout the week, but not been close to him again after their first encounter. Right now, he looks even worse off than he did then. His sadness and fear and…brokenness is no longer just visible under the surface - there if you know how to look for it the way Kurt does – but written across his face, clear in the fine tremor of his shoulders as he looks up at Kurt.

“You okay?”

“I’m sorry—“

They speak at the same time, and Kurt raises an eyebrow. Pretty Boy’s voice is choked, eyes bright, and God, he is so obviously _not_ okay that Kurt feels stupid for asking.

Kurt says as much, because he started saying everything he thought out loud a long time ago.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine,” the other boy is repeating, but his eyes are darting side to side like he’s a wild animal planning his best route of escape from a hunter, and Kurt’s a lot of bad things but he’s not _stupid_  and he’s not cruel.

“You’re not,” he says, voice soft, and brow furrowing, before he reaches out on impulse, and takes the boy’s hand in his, cringing a little as he flinches, so on edge and anxious that Kurt’s really struggling to see how on earth the image he’s trying to portray fits him at all – cigarettes and leather just don’t match up with the person behind the façade. Not one bit. And Kurt’s not claiming to know him already, but he knows that much.

He wraps his fingers gently around a bony wrist, doesn’t make eye contact for fear of being too intimidating, and walks them right out of school, towards the bleachers. “What’s your name?”

“Blaine,” the boy says in reply, breathes out like he’s on the verge of a panic attack.

“That’s a nice name. I’m Kurt.”

Kurt rubs a thumb against Blaine’s knuckles when he doesn’t say anything to that, rests his hands on his shoulders, and places him down on a concrete step by his favourite spot of the bleachers. “Now are you going to calm down for me?”

Blaine nods, eyes wide, and mouth open a little, his breathing too loud and a little fast, but he’s trying; Kurt can see he’s trying.

Kurt’s silent for a moment or two, just letting him be, before he gets a pack of cigarettes and his lighter out of his jacket pocket, clears his throat, says, “Would you like one?” because they do wonders for his nerves, and Blaine’s look about frayed right now, plus he figures they might act as a peace offering – a little, ‘I won’t hurt you, I understand’ type gesture.

“Yeah-I—yes, please,” Blaine replies, voice a little steadier as he glances up at Kurt, and then down again to pick at a loose thread on the knee of his dark washed jeans.

Kurt flicks the lighter with his thumb, the flame sparking as he holds it to a cigarette, and then holds that out for Blaine, watching as he looks up from staring at his lap.

“Thanks,” Blaine whispers, reaching for the smoke and then taking a long drag from it, his shoulders dropping a little as he does so before he looks out over at the football field.


End file.
